Sound Flow (2011)
Sound Flow is a sound installation which creates a special hearing situation. A sculpture, made by water pipes, is constructed in a dark area. Eight sound recordings, related to the water pipes, are played in loop inside the sculpture. Without any lighting, viewers can only touch, find the distributed holes on the sculpture and listen to them. A sudden water sound will flow in a particular direction, which provides a spatial hint for the viewers.
The work challenges the viewers’ perceptual experience by appropriation, separation and combination on objects and sounds. The notions of reading things and listening sounds are being discussed. It provides more points of view and makes viewers look at things in different ways.
Re-appropriation of objects
In the very beginning, I had not focus on any object. What I only knew was my passion in choosing installation as the medium of my Final Year Project. I wanted to examine myself in using a medium, which I had learnt in my three-year studying.
Installation is an important movement in contemporary art, which indicates a start of using found objects in the artwork. Artists’ craftsmanship is no longer an essential element in art. Artists can express their idea and thought by installing found objects in different ways. The meanings of the objects are changed by their creative activities.
Different with the art pieces made by the artists, found objects are created by others. They originally contain many meanings. In “Reading things: the alibi of use”, Neil Cummings mentioned different conventional frames of reading things. Like the material culture, it states social and cultural attitudes. Advertising, the strategies of consumption and the projected desire of the targeted consumers can be involved in its discussion. Looking at its representation, it becomes an indicator to individuals’ thought. Taking it as the commodity, it connects to the field of ideology, that an economic or political system is based on.[1]
From Cummings’s point of view, these approaches on reading things narrow the rich lives of the objects. He encourages people to discover more lives of the objects. Users can personalize the objects and seek for their possibilities while the viewers can take a momentary snap shot by looking at their actual uses.
The concept raises a further discussion in reading art object. Art object’s representational hegemony takes psychological investment in material things as an important issue. The viewers only look for the artists’ psychology from the artwork’s representation. It ignores the field of the audiences: how they think and use the object. Cummings’s theory shifts our attention from the dominated messages from the artists back towards the users’ responses.
Cumming provides some suggestions for the viewers and users. How the producers embody his concept has not been mentioned in the reading. Sound Flow intends to supplement the theory through giving expression to two roles: users and producers.
In the sense of users, the work re-appropriates the found object, water pipes. A common household setting is transformed into a sculpture. It can be touched, wandered and listened, instead of located in some hidden places. Moreover, the water pipes convert sounds, instead of the water. This inversion on the proper usages brings much surprise at hearing. The mechanism of the water pipes makes the sounds played with a special feedback. And the connection of the sculpture leads the collision among different sounds. The small holes are distributed on the whole sculpture. Holes at different positions present different spatial effect. Water pipes enrich the hearing experience. The work creates more meanings to the object. It steps into the producers and designers’ place and make changes on their creation.
Creating a situation
Based on the concept of unlocking the potentials of the found object, Sound Flow avoids using it as the tool to express any message which is unrelated to the object. It aims at highlight the presence of the water pipes. Their materiality, structure and mechanism are being emphasised. The meaning of the work is the object itself. Found objects are not passive carriers of meanings in the work. How the work shows the existence of the object has been mentioned in the last paragraph. And I do not repeat the content once again.
Except its focus, Sound Flow leaves much room for the viewers’ interpretation. Unlike the untouchable works, viewers’ participation is an essential part for the work. Audiences are required to explore the created environment. Irregular-shaped sculpture by water pipes and fittings is constructed in the dark area. Viewers do not know the whole picture of it. They can only rely on their sense of touch and hearing to recognize the place. Viewers touch, find the distributed holes on the sculpture and listen to them. Eight speakers, hided in the different positions of the sculpture, play the sound recordings in loop. Without any starting and ending point, different audiences may generate different versions. In each ten minutes, the water sound will be played from the speakers one by one according to the planned flowing direction. It intends to pretend a water flow, which gives a hint for the audiences on the spatial design. Suspect is one of the attractions in the work. Audiences’ unknown on its whole picture with some hints in answering their questions. It widens their imagination on the space, which enhances a more personal experience. Also, many variable factors assists in making the experience more and more personal, such as the audiences’ paths, positions, speed, location, the duration of hearing, etc. Everyone can have their own tastes in the work.
Audiences are the viewers and users. According to Cummings’s idea, how they can response to the work? As a viewer, s/he can view how the others undergo the created situation in the work. As a user, they can engage in the adventure and seek for the possibilities of using. To conclude Cummings’s idea, every usage is a re-made of the meaning of objects. The boundary between the users and producers becomes blurrier. Sound Flow experiments in importing the concept during the stage of production. I am really curious of what audiences perceive from this created situation.
Separation of sound object
Before moving on to the field of sound making, I would like to continue the topic we have talked over. As mentioned, Sound Flow highlights the presence of the water pipes. And there are many strategies to present its existence, such as the sculpture, dark area and sounds played inside the sculpture. In order to take another look on water pipes, sound recordings which relate to them will be included in the work. They are played in the distributed hidden speakers. And they have different relationships with the water pipes. Some are recorded from the water pipe while some challenge its definitions. The exact relationship between the water pipes and the sound recordings is not disclosed to the audience so that they can be more questionable. There are three types of relationships between the recordings and the water pipes.
1. Location recordings with the water pipes
In our daily life, water pipes are the connection among different spaces. I would like to include this feature in the work, so I made a few recordings in different locations. I hided the microphone in the water pipes and recorded the sound. To my surprise, the recordings have a new appearance due to the feedback generated from the water pipes. These location recordings become more difficult to identify.
2. Challenges on the definitions of water pipes
Phenomenology approach assists the discussion on the notion of water pipes. It is based on the study of human experience in which considerations of objective reality are not taken into account.[2] There are two recordings questioning the definition of the water pipes. One is based on its feature of converting water. A straw is same with the water pipes on this point. And I made a recording on using straws. Another takes our common hearing from the water pipes as the topic. Some Chinese words for describing the water sound were spoken from the pipes. It aimed at pretending the sound of water pipes.
3. Actual usages of the water pipes
Three recordings are presenting the actual usages of the object. One of the recordings is a melody which is played by the instrument made by water pipes from a Taiwan musician. The others are some creative practices of the water pipes by two different people.
I am also response to the sound mixing and arrangement, because I want to make it more ambiguous and unfamiliar with its sound source. It refers to Pierre Schaeffer’s acousmatic listening, a way that hearing the sound without seeing the causes behind it. This listening method reduces sounds to the field of hearing alone. From Schaffer’s point of view, the attention on the sound sources locks the potential of the musical qualities, such as frequency, levels and time. To extract its musical potentials, visual and audio cues are needed to separate. All physical, cultural and psychological references and indexes are needed to disconnect with the sound.
It is no doubt that Schaeffer’s concept goes beyond human’s general listening habit. We have no ear lids. We are condemned to listen. It is our inherent ability in linking the aural with our visual. Even though we hear sounds without sense of seeing, we may imagine the physical object that causes the auditory perception. It is uneasy to transform into the acousmatic listening. Only when making the recording more unfamiliar, the viewers then can give up in looking for its sound source. Due to the emphasis on the separation of sound from its source, it is no need to think of the objectivity of sounds. In this sense, it is sensible for me to rearrange the sound freely.
Environment is a key factor which affects the hearing experience. I put the sound sculpture in the dark area. The dark area ignores viewers’ visual. It makes them more concentrate on the sounds. Also, through the elimination of the visual, it lets audiences forget the object of generating sounds. Not only the sound source, but also the device of playing sounds is unidentified. Audiences have no visual basis for them to associate.
Schaeffer’s concept on acousmatic listening shifts the focus on the perceptual realities to another extreme: conceptual speculation. For me, it transformed the usual mode of listening into another mode of listening. It only indicates a new way of experience, but not an open-up of their potentials. Can we keep its literal as well as musical qualities at the same time? We imply an invisible relationship in recordings while we make it difficult to recognize. Sound Flow experiment this idea. It played the sounds with giving a hint that the sound recordings have some unknown relationships with the water pipes. Through giving some basis for their imagination, it can provide much suspect for the audiences to guess. They are no longer in front of the alienated sounds with no way. Also, guessing raises their awareness in hearing sounds’ tiny elements, such as timbre, space and so on.
Combination of the objects and sounds
Sound Flow is creating a special hearing environment. The concept of reading things and listening sounds are the two main issues of the work. Although they are related to the different concepts, they have a correlation with each other. Sound becomes a new content of the object. It assists in highlighting its features. Without sound, the object’s mechanisms, structure and fabric cannot be shown in the work. On the other hand, the object offers some extraordinary condition for playing sounds. Sounds have a new life in the work. Through installing the speakers in the sculpture by water pipes, the sounds perform with feedback. The total connection of the sculpture also give sounds a chance to crashes with others.
The artificial water sound flow among the water pipes makes a closer linkage between sounds and the object – water pipes. At this time, sounds are aiming at drawing a whole picture of the sculpture. They become more active to represent the presence of the object. A spatial environment constructed by the objects offers a relationship among the speakers.
This theoretical text focuses on the discussions on the project idea. It has not mentioned any production process and technical researches. They have been released in the website of my final year project.
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References:
Neil Cummings (1993), Reading things, Reading things: The alibi of use, Chance Books, London
Murray Schafer (2004), Open Ears, The Auditory Culture Reader, Oxford, New York
Vic Seidler (2004), The Auditory Culture Reader, Diasporic Sounds: Dis/Located Sounds, New York
R. Murray Schafer (1994), The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World, Chapter 1-2, Destiny Books, New York
Andrews Bick (2008), Silent Listening, web materials
http://silentlistening .wordpress.com/2008/
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